Liturgies of the Order of Julian of Norwich

This material appears here by the gracious permission of Fr. John-Julian, the founder of the Order of Julian of Norwich and the author/editor/arranger of the order’s liturgies. The order’s worship follows traditional Anglo-Catholic patterns including many of the classic breviary hymns, the Marian Antiphons, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Square-notation plainsong is the order of the day though some music items do appear in modern notation. While traditional, the liturgies here are in “Rite II” or contemporary English. To avoid copyright issues and for the greater glory of God many of the translations found throughout this body of work were either done or were edited by Fr. John-Julian himself. Keep checking back as more materials become available.

Furthermore, the order’s iPublications-Essays and More page has essays on matters liturgical and contemplate and someshort fiction on it as well.To round out the iPublications, the iPublications-JuliaNews page will keep you up to date on what the Order is up to.Please remember the order in your prayers and consider a donation to support the order’s work.

The Order uses the Rite II Daily Offices of the American ’79 Book of Common Prayer with some special modifications. Noonday Prayer is the only one that contains significant divergences from the BCP for it reflects the special emphasis of the order upon its patron saint, referring more explicitly to her words and spiritual practices. The ordines of the order are traditional, reading the current BCP Offices through the lens of the classical Breviary. I note in particular the consistent use of the Benedictus (Song of Zechariah) as the Second Canticle of Morning Prayer; the use of the Phos Hilaron as the lamplighting hymn, thus both including this great text yet allowing Evening Prayer to retain its original shape; and, of course, the Angelus/Regina Coeli before the Offices and the appending of the Marian Antiphons to the end of Compline.

The text was scanned and the picture files directly inserted into a PDF. The originals were front to back; there is occasional bleed-through of text from one side to another. That having been said, these files are intended to be produced in the same way; that is, they should be printed front to back if possible. There are two page numbers missing from the overall sequence because they were blank verso pages that allowed the next Office to begin on a new recto. (I will put these back in shortly…)

The Daily Office Use of the order is now complete. The next material to be added is the Office Hymnal. I plan to scan and format it so that it will match the other files in page orientation allowing all of the Office materials to be bound together.

In addition to his work on the Offices, Fr. John-Julian has also provided eight sung masses for the order. These hearken back to the work of the father of modern Anglican plainsong, Canon Winfred Douglas, but use Rite II (contemporary language) from the current Book of Common Prayer. Canon Douglas in his Kyriale combined elements from different liber masses to formulate his arrangements from which these have been taken. Thus, titles above the staff line indicate the original source from which the particular element comes.

The masses included here are the:

Missa de Angelis

Missa Marialis

Missa Penitentialis

Kyrie Rex Splendens

Missa Paschalis

Missa Dominicalis

Missa Solemnis

Kyrie Orbis Factor

The source from which I was scanning has a spiral binding. As a result, the scans are not always as straight as I would like them to be. I hope to remedy this in the future, but for now I will post both a PDF version and a DOC version. If you wish to use these in, say, bulletins you may want to straighten them a bit with photo editing software; the DOC format will give you direct access to the GIF files.Eight Plainsong Masses (PDF): (PlainsongMassesOJN)

The graduals, sequences, and tracts mentioned on the title page coordinate with the old BCP calendar; with the change to the Revised Common Lectionary they are now out of date. Replacements are in the works but will not be available for quite a while…

Additional Liturgies

On a technical note, I have received some of these as Word documents but I lack the fonts with which they were created. As a result, these have a different feel and page-breaks than the “originals”. I have uniformly applied the “Garamond” (the Prayer book font) to the files until I can access the originals and put them into PDF format.

Like this:

18 Responses to Liturgies of the Order of Julian of Norwich

I don’t see a way to transfer comments so I’ll re-comment here the interchange between Michelle and Fr. John-Julian on the order’s kalendar:

Michelle:
An interesting Kalendar from OJN. Can I ask how you choose which saints to include?

John-Julian, OJN:
Michelle:

Not an easy question to answer, because a lot originally depended on my personal biases, but here goes:

1. All Prayer Book feasts.
2. All commemorations from Lesser Feasts and Fasts (originally I omitted some of the “low church” folk, but eventually decided to be straight-out Episcopalian – although the Guardian says he is about to cut back a bit)
3. Founders of primary religious orders (Gilbert, Norbert, Scholastica, Cassian)
4. Most familiar mystics (Bonaventure, Birgitta, de Sales, John of Cross, John Vianney, Therese, Eliz of the Trinity
5. “Spiritual leaders” (Grafton, John XXIII, Ramsey)
6. Some British folk (Charles 1, Swithun, More, Wilfred, Walsingham)
7. Venerable traditional Catholic feasts (Conception BVM, O.L. of Sorrows. Corpus Xti, Sacred Heart, Beheading of J Baptist, Lucy – the last because her feast sets the dates for Ember Days)
8. Some contemporaries I respect or knew (Romero, Dorothy Day, Merton, Joe Hunt)
9. Saints named by Dame Julian (John of Beverly, Cecelia, etc.)
10. Martyrs whose relics are in our altar stones.
11. A memorial of our own Order’s founding.

Re. item #6 – I am quite surprised that you do not consider the inclusion of
the English mystics Walter Hilton, Richard Rolle and Margery Kempe, (all of whom were roughly contemporary with Julian of Norwich), the author of the Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer (martyr) and George Herbert, priest and contemplative.

I’m a little surprised by some of the British choices, or rather some of the missing British choices. Audrey (Aethelthryth) is probably the Anglo-Saxon saint most like Julian. Of course, I would also like to see Oswald commemorated more widely in the US as he is throughout the rest of the Anglican Communion. Charles I is an interesting choice. Our Lady of Guadalupe would be a nice North American choice. I don’t know why its not on the episcopal calendar.

The term “Guardian” is the title of the “superior” in OJN. Since we have both monks and nuns, I had to find a gender-neutral word and borrowed it from the Franciscans. “Superior” was too strong in its modern connotations. “Abbess” would always have to be changed to “Abbot” (and vv) in all the documents. So, “Guardian” seemed to work – with all its implications.

Charles 1 because he was, for a time, part of the BCP (until old Victoria cancelled him – also because I rather liked the idea of an “incompetent martyr”; Swithun because some of us had grown up with “St. Swithun’s Prayer Book”; Thomas More, I suppose because of “Man for All Seasons” (however inaccurate); Wilfred since he was omitted from LFF because he was nasty (like me); Walsingham — well, I guess obvious as the major Anglican devotion of BVM (and we have a small shrine in our chapel).

I already confessed to personal bias….so they can all be put down to that, if nothing else. One of the few perquisites of being Founder, I guess!

Deep gratitude to you, Fr John-Julian, for all of your wonderful work on these liturgical documents, which I know has been a labor of love. Thank you very much for allowing them to be posted here and on the OJN site. They deserve wide distribution and use within the church for better liturgy and better understanding of it!

Thanks for making all this available. I was at Julian House in February, 2008, and they didn’t have anymore copies of the offices and Psalms as used in the Daily Prayer so as an oblate probation of the OJN I appreciate having these with me. When I sing the office using these materials it is almost like being back there in the visitor’s gallery.

I was at Julian House in February, 2008 at which time I became an oblate probationer. I wanted to bring a copy of the Offices home with me but there were none available there. I am very grateful for having them published here so I have been able to print them off. When I sing the office now it is almost (not quite) like being back there in the visitor’s gallery.